Posts from October 2009

October 30, 2009

I love the new logo/poster for the current Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow, which opened last night at the St. James Theater. Not only is it vibrant and colorful, but it also conveys a clear sense that this is an old-fashioned musical that nonetheless provides a contemporary resonance.

And that's exactly what Finian's Rainbow is, at least as presented in the Broadway production. I was unimpressed by the show during its Encores stint (read my review), but in retrospect, it would seem that the book for that concert presentation was overly truncated. While I reveled in the Burton Lane/E.Y. "Yip" Harburg score, the lack of proper context in David Ives's abbreviated version of the libretto made the show detrimentally fragmented.

I saw the Broadway production of Finian's Rainbow the same day that I saw the execrable Bye Bye Birdie, and the comparison was quite telling. This production of Finian's has a life that's totally missing from the current Birdie. Why does Finian's succeed where Birdie fails? In a word: direction. Warren Carlyle brings a cohesive tone and a vibrancy to Finian's, with every character playing from the same page, whereas Robert Longbottom seems to have directed Birdie in absentia.

It's interesting to note how otherwise talented directors can drop the ball. Longbottom helmed the recent Broadway revival of Flower Drum Song, which contained some very innovative if not quite sustained staging, although the production closed at a loss. On the other hand, Carlyle was responsible for the theatrical misstep that was A Tale of Two Cities, although most of the blame for that abomination must surely go to its composer/lyricist/librettist, Jill Santoriello. That's the bizarre alchemy of theater for you: on any given production, the various talents present may or may not coalesce into a coherent and entertaining whole. There are no guarantees; it's always a crap shoot.

Carlyle certainly had a major advantage over Longbottom in terms of casting. Whereas Birdie seems to have been cast by committee in a blatant attempt to appeal to as many disparate constituencies as possible, the cast for Finian's is more organic. The lovely Kate Baldwin comes off infinitely better than she did in the recent Huntington Theatre production of of She Loves Me (read my review), and positively sparkles as Sharon. Cheyenne Jackson is charming but a bit indistinct as Woody, although he certainly can fill out a pair of jeans. Tony winner Jim Norton is pitch-perfect in the title role, and Christopher Fitzgerald is a delight as the leprechaun Og, giving a far more measured and entertaining performance than he did in Young Frankenstein. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the wonderful Terri White as Dottie, if only because of the moving piece that the New York Times recently ran on her. Apparently, Ms. White was homeless not 18 months ago, and now she's back on Broadway, a haunting reminder of the vicissitudes of the actor's life.

The production, and the show itself, do suffer from the occasional misstep. When I saw Finian's on Broadway, I was over on the far right of the orchestra, and my view was occasionally obstructed, but from what I could see, when the Senator Hawkins character is turned black, Chuck Cooper, who plays the African America version of Hawkins, looked down into the front of his pants to see if the transformation was...er...complete. The costumes during "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich" looked like someone had raided the costume closet of a local community theater. And I still don't quite get the point of the "Dance of the Golden Crock," in which the mute Susan character has a call-and-response dance/harmonica duet with another cast member. It seems like dance for dance's sake, and doesn't appear to serve any higher purpose.

As a piece, Finian's Rainbow is a direct descendant of the
Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition, which places a premium on crafting
shows that both entertain and inform. Finian's is a
particularly compelling amalgam of
old-fashioned structure and modern sensibility. But somehow it works,
offering both a strong social message and a charming diversion. And
that's exactly what librettist/lyricist Yip Harburg intended. "Of
course I want to send people out of the theater with the glow of having
a good time," Harburg once said about the show. "But I also think the
purpose of a musical is to make people think."

This talented and energetic crew has a full slate of upcoming events to raise money for BC/EFA, and this weekend we're putting on our flagship event, The Rocky Horror Show. It's a completely re-imagined production from last year's effort, and features a fresh cast of amazingly talented young performers.

Performances run from tonight to Saturday night. There are two performances this evening, October 29th, at 8:30 and 10:30, as well as Friday, October 30th at 9:30 and 12 midnight, and Saturday, October 31st at 9:30 and 12 midnight. Last year's houses were all full to bursting, and tickets for this weekend's performances are going fast, so contact the box office (617-912-9222) if you're hoping to see the show. Tickets are $10, but tonight's 10:30 performance is pay-what-you-can, if you're feeling a bit strapped.

If you need any extra incentive to see the show, I, your humble blogger, with be appearing as the narrator for the show tonight at 10:30, and at both performances tomorrow night. The cast has been working on some killer callbacks to shout at me (no doubt as expiation of my nefarious sins as an instructor), so if you've ever wanted to me put soundly in my place, there's no better opportunity.

When Avenue Q opened last week at its new Off-Broadway home, the New World Stages, a lot of people in the theatrical community were paying close attention. Of course, it's a much-beloved show, and many are simply wishing it well. (Except, perhaps, the producers of Wicked, from whose verdant hands Avenue Q so summarily snatched the Best Musical Tony in 2003.)

But the main point of interest seems to be how well Avenue Q will do financially after making this unusual move. It's not entirely unprecedented for a Broadway show to move Off Broadway, but it's certainly rare. And if Avenue Q succeeds, we can probably expect other small shows to follow suit. There's talk that The 39 Steps will make a similar move after it closes at year's end at the Helen Hayes. Perhaps Next to Normal and Rock of Ages might consider returning to their Off Broadway roots after their respective Broadway stints have run their course.

I've been enamored of Avenue Q ever since I caught one of its Broadway previews back in 2003. I've subsequently seen the show on tour (read my review), and then revisited the Broadway production shortly before it closed (read my review). And, over the weekend, I caught the show once again at its new digs. And I'm happy to say that the show has lost none of its charm upon multiple viewings. Of course, part of the fun for me the last two times is that I saw the show with friends, and got to witness their delighted reactions to the show upon their first viewings. But even when I saw the show solo on tour, I was still caught up in the response of the rest of the audience.

The performance of Avenue Q that I saw over the weekend featured three understudies, indicating that even Off Broadway shows are not immune to the scourge of absenteeism that seems to be sweeping New York theater. Fortunately, the standbys were mostly stellar, particular the charming Jed Resnick as Princeton/Rod and the delightful Ruthie Ann Miles as Christmas Eve.

The more I see Avenue Q, the more I'm struck not just by its wit, but also by its wisdom. Yeah, I know, that sounds pretty pretentious. But there's so much about the show that's just plain smart, from the wistful nostalgia of "I Wish I Could Go Back to College" to the downright Buddhist quality of "For Now." So I wish the show well in its latest incarnation, and strongly recommend that you make your way to 50th Street, between 8th and 9th to catch the show, if you haven't already.

October 27, 2009

As a lifelong fan of musical theater, I support any and all efforts to cultivate new artistic voices within the form. So, when the I heard that the Roundabout Theater would be including the new tuner Ordinary Days as part of its Roundabout Underground series, my interest was piqued.

Ordinary Days has words and music by one Adam Gwon, and let me just say that, although I had significant problems with the show itself, there seemed to be enough quality writing present to make me want to keep an eye on his future work. As for Ordinary Days, well, it plays more like someone's graduate thesis, a promising inaugural effort that nonetheless probably doesn't hold much promise for future development.

Ordinary Days starts off as one of those precious little Off-Broadway musicals, complete with arpeggiated piano accompaniment and the innocuous intent of putting a face on quirky-yet-lovable contemporary New Yorkers. The show begins rather statically with four soliloquies, one to introduce each character. The result is pleasant enough at first, but you'd be hard-pressed to call it innovative or edgy. Of course, not every musical needs to push the boundaries of the form, but Ordinary Days veers all too quickly into the land of undifferentiated and self-consciously introspective ballads, and eventually becomes painfully earnest, falling back on contrived circumstance and artificial emotion.

To be fair, there's some very interesting and amusing character work here, complete with ambitious contextual comedic numbers, particularly those involving Jared Gertner and the delightful Kate Wetherhead. Gertner plays the requisite free spirit who teaches Wetherhead's tightly wound grad student how to stop and smell the roses. There's some genuine humor and emotional honesty is some of Gwon's work for this pair, and Gertner and Wetherhead momentarily shine throughout the show.

SPOILER ALERT: In order to fully explicate my views on this show, it's necessary that I reveal a major plot point below. If you're planning on seeing the show, you may want to read the rest of this review subsequently.

The real trouble lies in the treatment of the show's romantic couple, played here by Hunter Foster and Lisa Brescia. Foster is saddled with the most egregiously bland ballads of the how-can-I-tell-her-that-I-love-her variety, while Brescia has the thankless task of providing subtext to a character for whom Gwon hasn't really provided enough back story. As we'll see, that turns out to be deliberate on Gwon's part, but it doesn't make Brescia's job any easier. It's difficult at first to determine the source of the sturm und drang for this couple. Then it turns out that Gwon has a cheap, manipulative card up his sleeve. He's been holding back on purpose, and the result is irritating, if not downright offensive.

Brescia's character, Claire, is having difficulty committing to budding relationship with Warren, played by Foster. [NOTE: An observant reader correctly informs me that Foster plays a character named Jason, and not Warren. Warren is the name of the other male character in the show. EIKILFM regrets the error.] Throughout the show, Gwon has hinted that there's something awry, but there's something very unsatisfying in the way he continually hints at Claire's ambivalence. Then, toward the end of the show, Gwon reveals all. On the way to a dinner party, Warren has blurted out a marriage proposal to Claire, causing her to run away from him. A few numbers later, Claire leaves a message on Warren's voice-mail confessing as to why she bolted. The song starts with Claire describing a previous romance, which led to a brief but idyllic marriage. Everything was apparently bliss...until the plane struck the first tower.

Really? Really? That's your explanation for why Claire can't commit? Because she lost her first husband on 9/11? In the first place, that's not very credible psychologically. Is she afraid that she'll lose her next husband in a similar once-in-a-millennium occurrence? But second, it's completely inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the show. Nothing in the style of preceding 70 minutes would indicate that such a turn of events would arise from the narrative, and the result is jarring and unsatisfying.

As I said, there was enough in Gwon's work here to pique my interest in his future projects. But Ordinary Days, although it contains moments of genuine pleasure and wit, is ultimately an ordinary show with some extraordinary elements. And not in a good way.

October 19, 2009

In 1992, a bold new musical came to Broadway, a daring show with a lot more on its mind than mere diversion. That show was Jelly's Last Jam, and in addition to boasting an uncompromising performance from its leading man, the late Gregory Hines, the show also took a hard, innovative look at the self-loathing, internalized racism of jazz musician and composer Jelly Roll Morton. Alas, director and librettist George C. Wolfe was only able to sustain the magic of Jelly's Last Jam for the first half, after which the show ran out of steam, unable to sustain the same sense of electricity and surprise.

A very similar dichotomy dogs the ambitious, entertaining, but ultimately flawed new musical Memphis, which opened last night at the Shubert Theater in New York. A major caveat: I saw the second preview of the show, which began Broadway performances in late September. I'm sort of confused as to why I was invited to see the show so early in previews. What's even stranger, the press folk said there was an embargo on publishing any reviews until the show actually opened. Which means nearly a month has passed since I saw the show. Oh, well. Go know, right? It's entirely possible that the production team has made significant changes to the show since then.

Similar to Jelly's Last Jam, Memphis has a killer first act. As I sat watching the show, I kept thinking, "Wow, this is not your typical musical." But a few minutes into the second act, my tune had changed to, "Oh, this really is your typical musical." Which is a shame, because so much of what the creators do in Memphis is solid and ambitious. The book by Joe DiPietro (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, All Shook Up) centers around an interracial romance coinciding with the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s. Director Christopher Ashley (Xanadu) and choreographer Sergio Trujillo (Jersey Boys) have taken DiPietro's story and created what is, for a time, a nearly seamless fusion of compelling story and cinematic staging. The show invites you in from the very first number, imbuing the proceedings with clever staging touches and a terrific
sense of forward motion.

The original score by David Bryan (of Bon Jovi fame), with DiPietro and Bryan sharing duty on the lyrics, features an interesting mix of technically diegetic numbers (i.e. songs in which the characters are aware that they are actually singing, as opposed to singing songs in character) that nonetheless propel the plot and reveal character. The songs aren't especially memorable, at least to my ear, but they more than serve their purpose within the context of the show.

Director Ashley has coaxed strong and compelling performances from his
talented cast, particularly Chad Kimball (Into the Woods, Lennon, Good Vibrations) as the white DJ, and Montego Glover (The Color Purple) as his black protege and love interest. Kimball and Glover, in addition to being kick-ass singers, also bring great verisimilitude to their performances, rendering credible the sense of both apprehension and attraction that these character feel toward each other.

As I said, I saw a very early preview of Memphis. I truly hope that the production staff were able to pull the show into better shape during the month of preview performances. When I saw the show, the second act needed trimming by about 15 to 20 minutes, mostly in the form of an enervating and derivative epilogue, which seemed borrowed directly from Dreamgirls. I genuinely look forward to seeing the show again, to see if the final product came closer to the promise of that dynamite first act.

October 16, 2009

Something is broken at the Roundabout Theater. I'm not just referring to its current production of Bye Bye Birdie, although it is indeed atrocious. No, I'm talking about the organization's show-development process. For the most part, they pick decent shows, choose talented performers to star in them, and get experienced pros to helm the productions. And yet somehow they consistently turn out dreck.

Bye Bye Birdie is, of course, an enervating case in point. How do you make this many truly talented people look this uncomfortable? The primary culprit here is director/choreographer Robert Longbottom, who doesn't seem to have had any idea about how to bring this show to life. I know that many will disagree with me here, but in my estimation, Bye Bye Birdie as a show doesn't really work; it's a charming but creaky period piece that requires a sure-handed director (Gower Champion, anyone?) to make the fragments whole.

Longbottom is apparently not that director. Nobody on stage in this production seemed to have any idea what character they were playing, or even what decade they were supposed to be in. Perhaps Longbottom spent too much time on the choreography and not enough on scene and character work. That would be ironic, since the dance here is ineffectual at best, distracting at worst. Particularly amateurish in execution were "Put on a Happy Face" and "Rosie," which featured pointlessly complicated and meaningless stage business that did nothing but fill stage time. Many of the numbers have no focus, including the confusingly muffled "A
Healthy, Normal American Boy," which featured so much diffuse action,
it was hard to tell what to pay attention to.

Again, it's really hard to fault the talented cast of Birdie for the production's failings. We've been hearing for weeks about how Gina Gershon wasn't really working out as Rosie. And, indeed, she was pretty awful. But Gershon was terrific in the recent revival of Boeing-Boeing, so again I blame Longbottom for casting her in the first place, then setting her adrift. Gershon's singing voice isn't awful: she mostly stays on pitch. Mostly. But she did tend to compensate for her lack of vocal power by egregiously scooping her notes. ("ooooo-When ooooo-will he find out...") And although she's not that bad a dancer, it does seem as though her every move has been painstakingly dictated, which removes any possible joy or spontaneity from her dance segments, rendering them joyless and mechanical.

The rest of the cast doesn't fare much better. John Stamos is miscast and ineffectual as Albert Peterson. He tries gamely, but ultimately he wears the part like an ill-fitting suit, all forced gawkiness and angular limbs, creating what is essentially a pale Dick van Dyke impersonation. The marvelously talented Bill Irwin is unfortunately nothing less than an embarrassment as Mr. MacAfee. Faced with a clear lack of direction, Irwin falls back on his clowning
shtick, and he really could have used someone who could tell him, "Uh,
Bill, that's really not working here." At first I thought he was playing one of the lizards from Edward Albee's Seascape, but then his performance morphed into Violet Weston from August: Osage County, all slurred speech and spastic tics. It brought a certain irony to the "Kids" lyric "Who can understanding anything they say?"

Newcomer Nolan Gerard Funk as Conrad Birdie is clearly a Zac Efron wannabe, although you'd really think he'd want to aim a bit higher than that. He's not awful during the group numbers, since all he really had to do was repeat the same mechanized movements. But when he got to sing alone during "A Lot of Livin' to Do," it was clear he lacked the requisite spark for the role.

At numerous times throughout the show, the gentleman sitting next to me was snoring audibly. At one point, his companion asked, rather loudly, "Do you want to go home?" I get the feeling that she was vocalizing what many of us in the audience were already thinking. The torpid, lifeless nature of this sorry production gave an unintentional resonance to the "Rosie" lyric that Albert sings at the end of the show, "I could watch a daisy for hours, and all I'd feel was several hours older."

October 13, 2009

Hey, guys and dolls. I betcha didn't know that bloggers are getting fat and rich from sponsor freebies and kickbacks. And with all the financial sturm und drang out there, there's no more effective way of shoring up the economy than to clamp down on this shameless blogger profligacy.

I jest, of course. But to hear the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) describe it, you'd think the blogger gravy train was right up there with, I don't know, creating fictitious investment opportunities, or selling criminally deceptive mortgages to unsuspecting (and mostly minority) home buyers. The FTC recently issued disclosure guidelines for bloggers: if you receive something free, and then write about it, you need to disclose that "material connection."

To be fair, I really don't think the FTC is going after people like me, but rather bloggers who enter into certain questionable sponsorship relationships, receiving actual cash payments to promote particular products. (See this recent article in the New York Times for some perspective on the complexity of the sponsorship issue.) Quite a few media outlets have decried this move by the FTC, calling it "unnecessary and unenforceable" (Silicon Valley Insider) and a "mad power grab" (Slate).

Full disclosure, dear reader: I get free stuff. It's mostly theater tickets, but I do also get some books and CDs, some of which I then review on my blog. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. Although I'm not paid for blogging, I do consider my self a critic, and critics have received free merchandise since the invention of professional criticism. I'd like to think that getting a free seat for a show wouldn't influence my judgment. My tickets to Tin Pan Alley Rag, Vanities, and Kristina were all free, and that certainly didn't stop me from writing rather negative reviews for all three.

Starting in December, bloggers must disclose any financial consideration or free goods and services that they receive in connection with any reviews that they write. Fines for not doing so can reach as high as $11,000 per incident. So, yes, I will indeed comply with the new FTC guidelines, indicating at the end of any review for which I received a free ticket that I did indeed attend gratis. But, for me, I think the FTC has bigger fish to fry.

But, let me put it to you, dear reader. Would you second-guess the
validity of a review if you knew that the reviewer had received a free
ticket? Would you think of the write-up as somehow biased? If the
answer is yes, then do you think about the free tickets that
professional critics receive when they review shows? Do you honestly
think that Ben Brantley and John Simon are pulling any punches because
they nabbed a freebie? Somehow, I don't think so.

I do have to say that I sometimes worry if certain press agents will stop arranging free tickets for me if they get the sense that my reviews are always negative. I think that insecurity is a function of the fact that, as a blogger, I'm not very high in the critical pecking order. Also, as I get to know more people in the industry, and as show creators contact me after reading my reviews, I have run into some awkward moments in writing unflattering reviews for shows created by people with whom I'm, if not friends, then at least friendly. And now that I'm in my seventh year of teaching at the Boston Conservatory, more of my former students are starting to appear in the shows I'm reviewing. That hasn't presented any difficult situations as yet, but there's certainly the possibility.

But I think the larger and more difficult question is this: is complete objectivity even possible in a task that is, almost by definition, subjective? Or is it simply a theoretically worthy but, for practical purposes, unattainable goal?

October 08, 2009

I've never been one to reflexively bash Andrew Lloyd Webber. Some of his shows I genuinely like, particularly Evita, while other shows I find flawed but enjoyable, for instance Sunset Boulevard. I usually even find something worth liking in each of his mega-hits. Catshas some great instrumental passages, especially "The Jellicle Ball." And the "Prima Donna" sequence in The Phantom of the Opera, though bloated, for some reason invariably makes me smile.

So, I certainly don't consider myself a knee-jerk Lloyd Webber hater. But the more I hear about his current projects, the more I get the impression that ALW's late career is turning into an expanse of easy repetition.

First, there's the upcoming sequel to Phantom, with the rather uninspired title Love Never Dies. I'm not one to assume that any particular show will be an automatic disaster. It all depends on the execution. And just because no musical has ever had a successful sequel, doesn't mean that it could never happen. No, the reason I was disappointed with Love Never Dies is that ALW chose to pursue a Phantom sequel over a far more interesting project.

For years, Lloyd Webber was toying around with the idea of turning Mikhail Bulgakov's brilliantly surreal novel, The Master and Margarita, into a stage show. The book takes place in Moscow in the 1930s, and involves an earthly visitation by Satan, accompanied by a motley retinue of assistants, including an anthropomorphous cat named Behemoth. It's a richly bizarre and satisfying book, and would make a wonderful stage show, in the right imaginative hands. But ALW gave up on the project, saying the book was too dense. "I've decided it's un-doable," he told the press in 2007. "It's just too difficult for an audience to contemplate. It's a very complicated novel."

No, Andrew. It's not un-doable. It's just that you couldn't find a way to do it. There's a difference. And don't blame the audience for your professional failings.

But the thing that really put me over the edge was the recent announcement that ALW would be penning six new songs for a forthcoming London stage version of The Wizard of Oz, although the classic Harold Arlen/E.Y. "Yip" Harburg songs will reportedly remain. (Have you no shame, Sir. Andrew? At long last, have you no shame?) The show will be cast via reality show (natch) and will likely hit the stage sometime in the 2010-2011 season.

So ALW is taking a well-loved and proven property, supplementing the score with six songs that no matter how good they are will pale in comparison to the originals, and casting the show with the already beaten-to-death reality-casting format, efforts that are lazy, sacrilegious, and lazy, in that order. Let's just say that Love Never Dies had better be spectacular. And I'm not talking chandeliers here.

October 02, 2009

If you're in the Boston area this weekend, and you're looking for a lovely way to spend this Sunday evening, why not head over to the Boston Conservatory. A bunch of my BoCo students have put together a revue entitled Sunday in the Hall With Sondheim. The "hall" in this case is venerable Seully Hall, which is on the fourth floor of the Conservatory's main building at 8 The Fenway. And, well, if I have to tell you who Sondheim is, then you really have no business reading this blog.

Two of my best students from last semester have put together this review: Joe Longthorne and Neil Reilly. Joe is the show's director, and Neil has created all the orchestrations and arrangements himself. And he's put together some really interesting numbers and sequences. Featured songs include "Take Me to the World" from Evening Primrose, "Being Alive" from Company, and "The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened" from Bounce/Road Show. The cast comprises more than 20 the best performers that the school has to offer, accompanied by an 18-piece orchestra selected from the Conservatory's many talented musicians.

The shows are at 7PM and 9PM this Sunday evening. Tickets are $7 in advance and $9 at the door. For advance tickets, contact sundayinthehall@gmail.com. The proceeds go towards the school's Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS efforts. In keeping with the BC/EFA tradition, there will also be a number of autographed goodies from various Broadway shows available through silent auction and raffle.